Taking Control
by Another Girl Grasping
Summary: Another installment in the Stockholm series. Hermione finds that killing the woman you love, leaves a void too deep to fill. Rated M for adult themes, trigger warnings all around, and as always, flavorful language.


Taking Control

A Bellamione fanfiction by Another Girl Grasping.

Summary: Another installment in the Stockholm series. Hermione finds that killing the woman you love, leaves a void too deep to fill. Rated M for adult themes, trigger warnings all around, and as always, flavorful language.

Disclaimer: None of the characters or settings mentioned belong to me, I am, merely borrowing them for a bit of fun. And please excuse any typographical errors, as all of this work was done on a cell phone.

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><p>"Hermione, we need you upstairs!" The brunette's eyes lingered on the papers before her, battle strategy and leaked information, names and locations. Her ragtag mudblood and blood traitor army was well worth its salt. "Hermione?"<p>

"I heard you godamnit! Unless you're about to tell me that Voldemort has surrendered and is here to discuss terms, your emergency isn't an emergency. Fuck off for a moment or two!" Hermione admonished, looking over her list of death eaters who may be open to swaying of opinion.

"Not quite, but close!" The voice called back. That caught her attention sufficiently. She made for the stairs, taking them two at a time. She relished the feeling of her muscles stretching and relaxing. It had taken an alarmingly long time and much work to bring her form back to its current state.

Her skin was still littered with marks, healers for the revolution insisted that they could fade most of them. Hermione didn't allow it. When anyone dared ask why, she merely looked down at her arms.

"You forget things when they fade." No one understood why she would want to remember her captivity, she never felt the need to explain. Hermione reached the landing and her eyes widened at the shock of white-blonde hair.

"Draco?" Hermione asked, shocked. She eyed him, his face was gaunt, cheeks uncomfortably hollow. He looked like her.

"Granger." The man acknowledged.

"Let me guess, you're seeking refuge? Forgive me if I don't quite believe you. Your side has sent many a spy." Her eyes roved his face. His features... some similar to Bella's. She wondered if taking him to bed would make her feel a little less empty. Probably not.

"Lock me up somewhere, take my wand. Just... keep me here. Keep me away from him." Blonde locks fell across his eyes and he looked up at her through the strands. His eyes brimmed with un-shed tears.

Hermione trained her wand (previously Bellatrix's wand) on Draco, shooing the others on their way. She walked him down to her room. The blonde was stripped of his wand and led to a cage, the centerpiece of her chambers. He willingly entered and allowed Hermione to close the door. It was always strange to be on this side of the cage.

If her followers ever noticed her habit of sitting inside the cage to think, they never made mention of it.

"Talk." She demanded. "Start with how you found us."

"I don't know. I felt trapped. I've been on the receiving end of... horrors. I needed an escape. I needed to be out of that place and then I was here." Hermione nodded. It was a spell of her own design. Anyone who was truly for the cause could find her. No one knew why, they just ended up where they needed to be. She'd made herself into a sort of thought taboo for the revolution.

"It's going to take a lot of convincing, Draco. But for what it's worth, I believe you." His blue eyes turned up to her.

"Why?" He asked. Hermione walked over to a closet, pulling out fresh sheets and blankets, along with a spare pillow. She cradled the items under her arm and stopped at her desk, retrieving scroll and quill.

"I know the look in your eyes." She replied. She handed the scroll and quill to the man behind bars, waved her hand over the linens, setting them up on the bed for him. "You need protection. The revolution needs information. Provide, and you may earn the chance to take up wand against the Dark Lord." Hermione's gaze settled on her former enemy. "Fail to provide and we will still offer you protection. I'm going to to get you some food." Hermione turned on her heel, head in for the stairs again.

"What kind of information?" She wouldn't have heard it if she hadn't been waiting for the whisper. She turned.

"Who can be swayed? I want important individuals, your mother, perhaps?" Draco set his eyes downward. Shame. He left his mother with those people. "I hear talk that she is an accomplished medi witch, and good with defensive spells." Hermione took a few steps closer to the cage, squatting and catching blue eyes. She could see his reluctance when it came to his mother. Bad blood there when it came to the witch who killed her sister. "We're looking for the last horcrux, Draco. I can't kill him without it."

"The snake. It's the snake." The answer came so quietly, it was almost impossible to hear. Hermione's eyes narrowed.

"How do you know this?" She demanded. Draco merely smiled sadly at her.

"How many of my aunt's weaknesses did she spill in the midst of your captivity? How many secrets that she couldn't tell anyone but you, her property? Is it true that you loved her?" Draco asked. The questions stung, but they weren't cruel, merely curious. Hermione understood in that moment. Draco belonged to the Dark Lord.

"Do you love him?" She returned.

"No, I can't love him. That's why he punishes me so harshly." Hermione nods.

"I'm glad you don't. I'd hate for you to feel the way I do." Draco's eyes soften.

"Hermione... about my aunt-" Brown curls shook violently with Hermione's vehement refusal to talk about her lost love.

"I'm not thinking about that just yet. I have a war to win." She couldn't hear about what Bellatrix was like outside of the cage in the dungeon. Couldn't bear the thought of who Bellatrix was in the world above. It would break her again. And breaking was simply not an option. The time for mourning would come, when it was safe to do so.

**_Later_**

"Severus, so help me, you will murder that snake!" Hermione slammed her hands on the desk before her.

"No. You will murder the snake. I will take care of the Dark Lord." Severus insisted. Hermione took a deep breath, choosing a different tactic. She circled the table, sitting next to her old potions master.

"Oh, not this again!" Severus groaned. Hermione could only smirk.

"Come on Severus. If you had ammunition as useful as this you'd make use of it even more often than I do." Hermione joked. "Now, which of us spent three years in an underground cell, being marked, fucked and tormented?" She cocked an eyebrow, expectantly.

"You did." Snape grunted.

"I did. And who had to kill the woman she loved to mount a revolution?" Her tone turned patronizing. Snape rolled his eyes.

"Do we have to go through this eve-"

"I'm sorry, who?" Hermione smirked at Snape's exaggerated sigh.

"You did." Hermione nodded. She stood back up, circling back around her desk, to the larger chair.

"So, that's settled then. You'll dispatch the snake. I, the snake-man. Thank you for dropping in." Hermione spent a few moments pretending not to notice the potions master's lingering presence. "Why are you still here?"

"I would see Draco." He said. Hermione's eyebrow rose as she stared blankly in return. "His mother, she wonders how he is faring."

"Yes, and you care for the woman. Go on down to my chambers. He is comfortably kept in my outer room. No harm has come to him, he is fed, and tended by medi witches." Hermione waved a dismissing hand.

"I believe Narcissa is prepared to come to our side. Now that it is the path her son has chosen." Snape spoke quietly.

"You know I want her here, but I hesitate. What is so different now? Am I not still the woman who murdered her sister?" Hermione asked, nearly choking on the thought of that woman in her headquarters. "If she kills me, who will lead the free peoples? Will you take up my mantle and make her your queen?"

"Draco didn't tell you, did he?" Snape asked quietly. Brown eyes narrowed.

"Obviously not, if I don't know why you think we can trust her, aside from your raging heart-on for her. Or do you want me killed?" Her eyes bore into Snape's, Daring him to flinch away, to indicate he'd entertained such thoughts. He knew the challenge well, she'd learned it from him.

"I am sworn to you, you know that." Hermione narrowed her eyes, finally nodding her acceptance of the man's answer. She motioned for him to continue. "Draco, he was deeply saddened by his aunt's death, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was still in the manor, even after she'd been put to ground." Hermione watched as her old potions master reached deep within the layers of his robes.

What he produced shouldn't have shocked her as much as it did, everything that was once hers became Bella's when the witch won her as prize. Yet, seeing her old wand was akin to the seeing the dead risen. She always thought the magic-imbued wood was snapped upon her capture. For a moment she dare not believe her eyes. Dare not reach for it. For a moment emotion stirred where she hadn't allowed it to in nearly a year.

"How?" The question so quiet Severus barely hears it. He watched his friend's hand lift, her fingers twitching in reaction to the piece of her old life, lingering mere inches from grasping what was lost to her.

"Draco could feel her magical signature come from it." The fingers that nearly closed around it stopped, pulling back as though burned.

"Her magic?" She asks, her face painted in disbelief. "You're not suggesting..." she refuses to voice the thought.

"No, I am not merely suggesting. I am informing you that Bellatrix Lestrange made a horcrux of your wand." Severus extended the wand further toward her, push in it into her hand. The shuddering gasp that spilled from her lips was better suited for her rooms than here with her mentor, but she couldn't help it.

More than holding Bella's wand, more than dreaming of her touch, the feel of her lover in this wand sent heat directly through her. It was like coming home. The longer she held it, the more her body responded.

"Go. Get out. Go get your woman. You're in charge tonight, I am not to be disturbed." Her eyes didn't leave the object in her hand as Severus stood and walked out.

In the hall, he cleared the rest of the rebels waiting to speak to their leader. He lied about Hermione feeling sick, assuring them that there was nothing they could do to help. Severus Snape couldn't help the pride that swelled in his chest, Hermione may still be broken when it came to her mistress, but she was stronger than ever in all other capacities. And where strength led, the masses would follow.

He wondered if Bella knew what she was doing after all. She'd slowly forged the killswitch to Tom Riddle.

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><p>So there's the start. Hope you enjoyed. Feedback is much appreciated!<p> 


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